About What Is Nostalgia: What Is Nostalgia?

What is nostalgia and what are the health implications that might lead to depression? Depression not only affects the person who is going through it, but also everyone around them, including friends, family, loved ones, spouses, and children.

What is Nostalgia

A word coined with two Greek words `nostos’ which means returning home and ‘algos’ which means pain referring to the pain a person goes through because he/she wants to return to his/her native home' and feels that he/she will never see it again. Almost everyone has a strong connection with the place they call home. It is also an emotion which is brought out by living in the past.

Nostalgia is not a disease and has no fixed pain which can be treated medically. It is a emotional and physical condition. Earlier it was believed that nostalgia was a serious condition that incapacitated the sufferer to an extent of bringing them to a point of despair due to intense homesickness. It was considered so critical that soldiers who suffered from nostalgia were in most cases' pulled off duty. Until the 1980s it was a condition where voluntary release from the military was permitted. It was not possible for a soldier to go to the battle front or remain in the battle front in such a state of mind. The adverse effect of nostalgia was a major problem for the military and government institutions all over the world for centuries. With medical treatment being administered for related conditions' nostalgia is no longer considered serious.

Almost all human beings have gone through nostalgia either as bleak memory of one’s childhood or as homesickness. Nostalgia also brings out joy of a person who recalls happy memories of the past. This emotion is brought out by photographs and other material objects of sentimental value. It does bring out emotions of comfort especially for seniors who thrive on the life of the past and wish to retain as much of these memories as possible' while passing down memories to the younger generation especially to their grand children to whom they are able to relate wonderful stories. In contrast' some nostalgic memories can become depressing as they live in the past and long for that life surrounded by their children. In the absence of frequent visits by the children who are living too far to visit or live in their hometown and if parents are living in seniors home' nostalgia can bring out more pain' as it combines with feelings of hopelessness or helplessness' as they are unable to go back and have homes of their own and this could lead to depression which is different and a bigger problem altogether. Nostalgia itself is a normal condition provided it does not turn into a unhealthy depression.

Nostalgia is the link of the present to the past. Nostalgia is thinking of usually happy feelings of the past through a particular situation which is not possible to attain in the present but is still able to enjoy. It looks with longing for those situations of the past and re-live it through memory.